Tag Archives: Blog

This summer I neglected the beach and barely left town – aside from a trip to South Florida to visit my father – so I determined to take a vacation from my Dystonia…if only my muscles agreed to cooperate. How does one get away from the gift that never stops giving? Considering the impact of the heat on my swagger, I found myself in search of a modus operandi for my reprieve. Perhaps all I needed was to abstain from my compulsion to take a weekly swipe at the vagrancies of movement disorder. I wished my blog an abundant first anniversary and followed suite by hunkering down for a mid-summer nap.

I found considerable relief embarking on a vacation from a single aspect of myself, perhaps a metaphor for all I long to leave behind. Though Dystonia stubbornly insisted on continuing its dominion over my movements, I happily report the small space it occupied in my daily focus. Now that’s a trip I should make more often. Though we can’t pick and choose the assorted parts comprising our wholes, we can certainly choose where we allow our thoughts to wander.

So let me remind you, as I’ve reminded myself, that life is about so much more than Dystonia…or any medical condition. We all have room in our minds for those much-needed respites from our constant – and unwelcome – companions.

Like this:

A year ago today I pressed the publish button on my newly created, blissfully pink WordPress site, a simple motion that shook my very core with far greater velocity than Dystonia. I’d embraced a new self-view removing shame from my equation, embarking upon an exploration of alien territories within myself and new roadmaps to human understanding.

My blog marked the end of one odyssey and the beginning of another, perhaps even more transformative than the first. I set out with lofty goals – no less than unburdening my soul, sharing deeply felt insights and describing my strange disorder without it sounding like a virulent medical horror, starting with the post pinned to the top of this site. I ventured into foreign lands endlessly more foreboding than the manipulative villain lurking in my brain. I’ve tackled my deepest nightmares of how I might present to others, wildly misplaced self-phobias, misinformed perceptions of disability, even notions of sexuality.

In the span of a year, I’ve hurled myself into relationships I never could have imagined, discovering like-minded people who once manifested as unintelligible to me as Dystonia previously stood to many of you. Indeed, I’ve introduced some of my new friends on the pages of this site, individuals who’ve helped me see myself in a new light and shine like multiple suns on my brightly lit world. I stepped beyond the human threshold, which often paints a wholly uninformative picture, and with a lingering look found overwhelming commonality that speaks to our shared spirituality. Notwithstanding an abundance of horrid descriptives I’d love to banish from the dictionary, chronic illness and disability can be a curtain masking healthy and entirely “able” human souls.

As my own personal muse, I strive for optimism to guide my way. “Dystonia Muse” is as much a compilation of my finest aspirations and intentions – forever inspiring me to walk forward – as a hard and long-earned life lesson. Everyone has an internal muse, an ideal self we formulate through sweat, tears and tenderness and strive to hold, the person to whom we ever inch closer as we journey through our lives, the best of our hopes and desires, an amalgamation of our loftiest dreams fueling us to press onwards.

Dystonia Awareness Week may have passed but make no mistake, the flame burns on. I’m proud to participate in Dystonia BloggerMania, the continuing celebration of Dystonia activism rocking the World Wide Web. Think of us bloggers as “reality journalists” – patients, parents and children determined to shake up cyberspace by flinging out our stories for all the world to learn. No scripts in this mass exercise of reality writing, just a flow of words coming straight from the heart.

Having spent the better part of a year revealing my deepest, darkest secrets, I undertake the utmost admiration for the raw honesty displayed by my blogging buddies as they share their innermost thoughts and personal struggles. While publishing our “diaries” can be a hairpin curve, we gain a tremendous sigh of relief from facing our demons and laying everything on the line. Take one step outside your comfort zone and the other foot will follow. Before you know it, you’re off on a brisk run.

Come join us. Blog for yourself, for your community, to enlighten the ignorant. Tackling the blogosphere is seizing a ripe moment to make a splash in the pool and practice your swimming strokes. Blogging entails publicizing a kaleidoscope of challenges constituting a difficult day in the hope of connecting with those in need of hearing us. We’re working through the most personal of issues in a public form of therapy as part of a never-ending journey to find invisible upsides amid the all too visible downsides of life. Blogging enables us to combat narrow-mindedness by offering up our intimate details as examples of the wealth of human diversity. We abandon great big chunks of our privacy for the greater good of educating friends and strangers about the insidious criminalities of our disorders. Our collective impact is realized post by post, read by read.

Highlights from the Bronx Zoo Walk on Oct. 4, 2015

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Email: ps@dystoniamuse.com

What seems like a lifelong experience with Dystonia began with a "mis-step" when I was 8-1/2. Dystonia may have staged a coup over certain body parts but my heart and soul remain firmly my own. I'm a friend, daughter, sister, creative mind, honorary auntie, fan of the quantum mechanical, hopefully one-day spouse, now also health activist.